“Why are you so determined to go? It doesn’t even make sense.”
He pauses then, but doesn’t meet my eyes, hands clenching into fists. “Call it atonement, but I can’t walk away from people who need my help. I can’t risk letting the monster loose again, so I have to be better, stronger, more…everything than anyone else. See, I don’t get to be a callous son of bitch because I perfected it. I don’t ask you to understand or to risk your life over this, so stay here. It’s fine. If I’m not back in two hours, get the fuck off station. The AI can handle it.”
Though it’s a bad idea on a thousand levels, I want to touch him. Brush the dark hair out of his eyes and lean my forehead against his chin. We’re both so fucking broken that I understand our strange attraction, a push-pull magnetism born of similar scars.
It’s a foregone conclusion that I wind up heading back with March. I can’t let him die alone, the unsung hero. I don’t know what he thinks he can do up there, but I’ve got his back regardless.
I can’t help wondering about the broken jumpers Hon admitted to kidnapping. Who else has he taken and why? I feel the pinch of an awakening conscience. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass traveling with a bona fide hero, not that I’d have thought to use that sobriquet on March a short time ago. But it applies.
I wonder if he’s going to bring up the way I left and brace myself for awkwardness. He’s quiet as we make our way back on station. Wish Canton Farr had been able to tell us more about security, but he spent most of his time in the library, trying to look harmless. So most likely, they’re tracking our movements via that door. But there’s nothing we can do; it’s the only way into Hon’s Kingdom.
“He told me enough about his operations that I don’t think he intends to let me leave,” I volunteer.
“Just figuring that out, Jax?” His tone sounds like nothing, though, no mockery, no teasing, and there’s an astonishing coldness in his neutrality. “I told you not to mess with him. I’ve known the man a long time.”
My mouth quirks in what can’t rightly be called a smile. “I never claimed my brain is my strong point, apart from the J-gene.”
I offer the opening, so I expect a standard March slam, but instead he falls silent. We pass through the throne room, eerily empty, even though I know it’s the middle of the sleep cycle. I feel like a little kid sneaking to the kitchen after hours to pinch some cookies, but we’ll get a lot worse than a warm bum if we’re caught.
As we reach the library, he says, “Go on. Test the codes Farr gave us and see if you can use them to access complete schematics for the station.”
When I do, the archives immediately unlock and the sys-term says, “Welcome back, Canton Farr.”
It takes a moment, but I’m able to find the original layout and design. Without looking at March, I activate PA-245 and invite it to translate the data to its data banks via scan. The slim beam flickers over the screen as I pull each one up. I also snitch info about DuPont Station’s initial weapon systems to give us an idea what might be shooting at us when we make a run for it.
“Compile the separate images into a single three-dimensional map, please.”
“Certainly, Sirantha Jax.”
That tears it. We have to take Farr with us, as it’s inevitable this terminal will show what records he accessed recently. A man like Hon will place only one interpretation on such research—the correct one—and take steps accordingly.
PA-245 presents me a nice map of the facility, and I study it for a moment. March seems uncharacteristically passive, or maybe he’s just distracted. Eventually, he comes over, peering at the clamshell terminal before saying, “The lift isn’t the only way up there. We should access the maintenance shafts via the ventilation ducts.”
I’d like to protest. Crawling about in dark, dusty ducts isn’t something I want to do, but going straight to the third deck in plain sight seems too foolhardy, even for me. There’s direct access to the maintenance tunnels, of course, but we don’t have door codes. We’re not authorized repair personnel. If we knew where they lived, March might be able to get the codes as he’d done on Perlas, but that just increases our risk of discovery for no guaranteed gain.
Sighing, I nod and indicate a spot on the display. “We can access it through a panel here.”
“Let’s go. With luck, Dina will have supplies on board by the time we finish up.”
I follow him, and we retrace our steps, where I half expect to find Hon sprawled on his barbwire throne. But the room’s still empty, and March leads the way over to the far wall, behind the table where the rovers were playing Charm, and drops to one knee. He tinkers with the catch, and it snaps open.
“Ladies first,” he tells me, polite as a banker.
Yeah, sleeping with him was definitely a mistake. I miss him giving me shit, even the way we bickered. Now there’s just this silence in which everything dies. But I know what’s expected of me, so I crawl into the vent, where it is, not surprisingly, dark and dusty. My PA gives off a faint glow, enough for me to read the map and orient myself. Thank Mary, it’s not dark enough to trigger a flashback.
“I guess we might as well get going. We have a lot of crawling to do before we reach the maintenance shafts.”
That turns out to be an understatement. My knees are sore and my shoulders aching by the time we reach the hatch where we’ll emerge in the tunnels. The station’s riddled with them like honeycomb, permitting repairs to otherwise-impossible-to-reach pylons. I wonder how long it’s been since anyone ran a safety check, though.